A Bosnian company Violeta, specialising in hygienic products, has bought €200,000 worth of medical equipment from China to help the country's medical system stop the spread of Covid-19, including the highly sought-after respirators, company owner Petar Corluka told N1 on Friday evening.

He said the company tried to buy the equipment from European producers but no one could guarantee their delivery before August, which is why he opted for China, but now he needs the help of Bosnia's authorities to fly the equipment back to Bosnia.

“The problem is that there is a traffic jam and suppliers are already asking us to move the goods, so I asked for embassies to get involved, for the government to get involved, for banks to get involved, and I don't know who else. America and Germany have no equipment and respirators, and we were able to find and pay (for the equipment). I ask that they (the government) meet us halfway and help us with the organization. We need to help the Bosnian health care system in this difficult situation,” Corluka told N1.

Despite the risks involved in the purchase of this equipment, Corluka said they went ahead regardless of everything.

“We paid €200,000 for the equipment and we were at great risk because we were working with these companies for the first time. We have recognized the time when Bosnia's health care system needs help. We decided to get all the hospitals, 38 health care institutions a total of 400 masks, professional hospital suits and six respirators and distribute them around,” Corluka explained.

He said he did speak with the authorities but that he is still waiting for a concrete answer.

“I can't say anything bad about them, but they were completely unprepared, slow and indecisive for this situation and no one wants to take responsibility for this and say ‘here, we'll resolve this.’ The politics needs to get involved, all the embassies cause their countries are pushing their surplus production into Bosnia, which is a good market for them but when this crisis appeared only the local products were on the shelves of supermarkets and all the imports were gone at one time. We'd have to be a bit more humanely involved in this and those companies that export goods into Bosnia should help a little,” Corluka said and added that this is only the first part of his help.

“We'll continue to help and when all this is over we'll need help because businesses alone won't be able to deal with this by themselves,” he noted.

Speaking about the company, he said Violeta is a stable and well-organised company which successfully deals with its competition in various situations.

“We ensured the raw materials which are shipped to the Ploce port in Croatia. Employees are working in masks under special conditions. Health is more important than profits, everything's focused on preserving health,” Corluka concluded.